What's the best wad for ambient sounds?

I've noticed there isn't much emphasis on ambient sounds in Doom. Are there any wads out there that buck that trend?

As far as I know there isn't much out there.

An aesthetic I've been hoping to see, though, is a Doom mod or other game with stylized, pixelated graphics but ultra-high quality and realistic sound design. I think that would be very compelling.

Doom doesn't have ambient sound actors (contrarily to Heretic, Hexen and Strife). There are a few mods that give ambient soundtracks, generally ripped from the PSX or N64 ports.

Lots of Doom projects use ambient sounds. Most of them just use sounds ripped from Quake 2 though. But Aliens TC for instance got movie clip sounds and my own old project Nimrod had some ambient sounds around the levels.

I'm not sure about the best, but this wad has some.

Just wait til my little project comes out.

More ambient sounds than you can all poke a stick at.

Paranoid is chock-full of ambient sounds of all varieties. There are plenty of terrain-based and user-activated sounds too:

1. Technical & mechanical: tech-hums, engines, modems, etc.
2. Nature: wind, birds, crickets, frogs, waterfalls, etc.
3. User-activated: keyboard typing sounds, liquid gurgling, adrenaline shots, armor charging, etc.
4. Terrain: footsteps on metal, water splash, bullet ricochet on metal, etc.
5. Reverb effects: underwater, ducting, tunnels, vast halls, etc.

The "Threshold of Pain" demo release by scalliano has ambient music/sounds, much like the audio tracks found in "Doom 64." It's pretty awesome atmospheric stuff, too :).

PsychoPhobia uses ambient sounds fitting for the theme of the map (birds, machinery, lava, etc).

I'd like to see more wads designed like any classic Doom level, but with ambient sounds ripped from Doom 3.

printz said:

I'd like to see more wads designed like any classic Doom level, but with ambient sounds ripped from Doom 3.

Legacy of Suffering kind of reminds me of what you're saying, although, it looks more like Doom 3 than classic Doom...But, I don't know, as soon as I read your comment, I immediately thought of LoS.

Ambient sounds were one of the main features in this project, mainly industrial/tech but a few natural and hell ones too. (Quake 2, Half-Life, Unreal & Sin were the main sources...the last of these is excellent for ambience IMO)

Touting my own horn here (sp?), but...

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=15048
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=15862

Uses sounds from Quake 4, Half-Life series, Max Payne and others I might have forgotten. Some are heavily edited\distorted versions of their originals.

exl said:

Touting my own horn here (sp?), but...

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=15048
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=15862

Uses sounds from Quake 4, Half-Life series, Max Payne and others I might have forgotten. Some are heavily edited\distorted versions of their originals.

Toot your own horn all you want--these WADs are AWESOME.

40oz said:

I'm not sure about the best, but this wad has some.

Here's an earlier wad that uses the same principle to produce ambient sounds. The main drawback is that you have to sacrifice a monster class for each sound.

I remember Knee-deep in ZDoom made good use of ambient sound.

While not quite ambient, Aliens TC used DeHackEd to make actors that would play voice clips from Aliens on activation. It made for an interesting effect.

Yes, Aliens TC showed the way here, but few followed. AOTW (Asylum of the Wretched) was a notable wad that used some to good effect.